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What Elected Officials Beg Me Not to Say

RUSH: John in Miami. You're next, Open Line Friday, great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Seventy-two degree-clear blue sky dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Same here, man. Same here. Great to have you.

CALLER: So while I was on hold, I developed a name for the theory that I have, and it's the "What are you gonna do about it?" theory that the administration has, and it goes something like this. The obvious answer that I see to a tyrannical dictator running the country and changing the laws, is the courts. That would seem to be... It would seem to me that every company that didn't get special dispensation by the administration would then have standing to challenge the favors that are being granted to everybody else.

In other words, the companies under a hundred. So why, then, aren't people pursuing action against illegal activity? I think the answer is easy. Companies that have a hundred people or more are run by not reckless managers who have better things to do than pick a fight with the government, who will then audit them, inspect them, what have you. So that's the "What are you gonna do about it?" theory. How did I do?

RUSH: Well, if I understand you correctly, one of the problems with going to court, if you're one of these businesses that you would say has standing, that's being irreparably harmed or harmed greatly by what Obama is doing... I guess my answer is the biggest reason they don't is they're afraid. It's fear. Everybody's afraid of this guy. Everybody. The Republicans inside the Beltway are petrified. They're petrified of Obama. They're petrified of the media.

Way too many people, if you asked me, are afraid of the media and afraid of Obama, and the fear of Obama is racial. They're just scared to death of being called racists, and that may sound simplistic, but I beg you to not discount it. You'll never have any of 'em admit it, by the way. They won't even go so far as to admit it. But it's abject fear of being called a racist, and then there's the real fear of suing. Even if you are granted standing, you can't compete with the money the Department of Justice has in defending the president.

You just can't. They will take your company and bury it. So the prevailing attitude becomes one of survival. Let's try to weather this and let's hope other aspects of our system deal with this. Let's hope the political system deals with it, or maybe other areas or the judiciary. Maybe the state legislatures will at some point get serious with an Article V constitutional convention. But it's fear, and Obama's well aware of the paralysis that people have and he takes advantage of it fully.

You know, let me go back to something that the previous caller was asking about in terms of the Wall Street Journal and attacking talk radio for freezing amnesty in its tracks. I have had on several occasions -- three different occasions, folks -- meetings, two of them actual dinners, with either ranking representatives of high elected officials or elected officials themselves. They have done their best in one instance to persuade me that I was wrong in the way I was looking at "immigration reform."

The other two meetings did not try to tell me I was wrong. They tried to tell me that I was not correctly understanding their objective, that it wasn't amnesty, and they spent a lot of time detailing the minutia of their proposals. And it was stuff filled with green cards and e-verification and all of this gobbledygook bureaucracy that never stood a prayer, but they believed it a hundred percent. They thought it was a solution, and at every one of these three meetings... This is the point.

Each meeting that I'm talking about here has taken place in the last three years. At each of these meetings with high-elected officials -- not the Obama Regime, but there have been Democrats at these meetings -- I have been told, quote, "If you call it amnesty, it's dead." And they have sought to explain to me how it isn't amnesty, and they have done their best to show me how it isn't amnesty. "It is gonna take time for these people to be granted citizenship," and blah, blah, blah.

They've really gone to great lengths to try to persuade me. They haven't succeeded because at the end of the day, it is amnesty, what they're doing, even though they may not even admit it to themselves. Now, the point of this is, the Journal says that talk radio's killing it, and these people wanted to talk to me because, they say, "If you call it amnesty, it's dead." Why? Why does what I call it matter? Now, in the Journal's opinion, for some reason, elected officials are afraid of me.

You know, that's a popular bit of conventional wisdom, that Republicans are afraid of Limbaugh. You know, one day I'm the de facto head of the party. The next day I'm just an entertainer; then the next week, I'm the de facto head, and then the next week I'm back to just being an entertainer. But the Journal is of the opinion that elected officials are simply afraid to incur my wrath. Now, why? What does that really mean? Well, what it means is who they're really afraid of is you, not me. It's you. I am one person.

Okay. So I get on the radio after they propose their amnesty bill and I rail against it, big whoop. I'm one person. Nobody's afraid of one person. It's not me they're afraid of. What they are angry at, when you strip it all away, is this bond that I have with you, members of my audience. You happen to believe what I tell you, which is very smart, because I'm not lying to you. I do not say things I don't believe, for any reason. I don't want to advance the things I believe on false premises. I don't want to get a bunch of people supporting me on the basis of lies. I tell you exactly what I think about everything, and those of you who end up believing it then become, I guess, a very vocal and big group of people who let your elected officials know, and that's what the Journal's actually editorializing against.

Let's put it this way. I guess they think that if talk radio weren't in existence, that you wouldn't think what you think. If this show weren't on the air then you wouldn't care, and you'd be all for amnesty, and you wouldn't be bugging members of Congress and all that. It's a popular misconception that everybody's made since the first day of this program, which is that I'm a Svengali and you're a bunch of mind-numbed robots, and you're just executing my marching orders every day. Even people on the right apparently think that. And nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth of the matter is, you believe what you believe, I come along, I happen to be, in 1988, the first national media voice saying things a lot of people agreed with, and so I was simply validating what people already believed, giving them a little confidence in it. They weren't alone. But you're not sponges and mind-numbed robots. You're just the exact opposite. You're among the most informed and educated, intelligent people in the country. That's what bothers them, I think. So they just conveniently blame talk radio for it. But when these elected officials come to me and say, "Look, don't call it amnesty, 'cause it's not, and you're gonna kill it," it means the same thing.

It means if I call it amnesty, you're gonna believe it's amnesty because I'm saying it, and then you're going to call members of Congress and they're gonna end up being paralyzed. And they just think if talk radio wasn't here then none of that would happen and they would get it sailed through like a hot knife through butter. And I don't think that's the case at all. I remember it wasn't too long after the show started that TIME Magazine or Newsweek, one of the two, actually did a cover story on, "Is there too much democracy? Is there too much citizen participation?"

It was a cover story. I'm pretty sure it was a cover story. It was after 1994. Yeah, it was after the Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years, and it was, "Is there too much democracy? Are there too many people participating?" And the presumption was that you didn't know what you were doing. That you were nothing but mind-numbed robots and you got me on the radio telling you Democrats bad, Republicans good, you swept the Democrats out. Oh, no, there's a problem with democracy, and it's all my fault, because if it weren't for me, you would be voting the way you're voting, thinking the way you're thinking. That's what they don't get, that that isn't the reason you do what you do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me say one more thing about this, folks, if you'll pardon me, if you'll indulge me here. I got an e-mail during the break. I've never been threatened at one of these meetings with senators, members of the House, representatives from the Bush administration, I've never been threatened. These dinners, these meetings have always been totally aboveboard and there has been an honest attempt by these people to persuade me that I'm wrong and that it isn't amnesty and so forth and so on.

At one of these meetings, one of the Democrats changed the subject, started talking about the next election and started asking me what I was gonna do, and he started talking to me in the language of electoral politics. "What are you gonna do about the demographic and Arizona and district 4?"

I said, "Wait, wait a minute." I said, "You guys don't understand. I don't look at the country the way you do. I do not tailor my message for this group here or that group there. I don't come in here every day and say, you know what, I'm a little light on women today, I better talk about women's issues. I don't do that. You guys do that. You guys will come up with a campaign message or supposed position or piece of legislation, and you're trying to fool people. I don't do that. I don't even see those demographic groups in my audience. To me they're just human beings, they're people. They're men and women, they're adults, and they're Americans, and that's as far as it goes."

And this Democrat threw up his hands, "Oh, okay, okay, okay," and he was happy, 'cause he thought he had me, because I did not understand how elections are won. And he may be right about that. But I don't look at this radio show as winning elections. In fact, when I've talked about winning elections on this program, pretend here that I'm a candidate, what have I said I'd always do?

Whether the group is Hispanic or women or homosexuals, I've got a message for every American in the country, what I want the country to be, and this is what I would tell you in hopes that you would vote for me. And it wouldn't be tailored to whatever somebody's skin color is or their sexual orientation or any of that. But that's what politics is, but I'm not that.

And I said, "You guys, it might help you to understand I'm not opposing what you guys want to do because I think my audience wants to hear me oppose it. I oppose it because I really do," and then I tell them why. And if they believe me, they believe me. But it was cross-talk because politicians do tailor ads and messages for groups of people. "We're short on Hispanics. That's why we got to..." I don't look at it that way at all, and they do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was TIME Magazine, folks. It was January 23rd, 1995, and the cover story headline was: "Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?" Since 1995 I have been seen as the problem for the political class.